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Productive Aging
Introduction
Far from being years of leisure and inactivity, later life is increasingly recognized as being characterized by high levels of productivity. The concept of productive aging captures both paid and unpaid activities that have social value and are performed by adults during the later years of the life course. Late life engagement in activities such as paid work, volunteering, informal helping, caregiving, and taking on the role of a grandparent caregiver are widely accepted as markers of productive aging. Estimates from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) suggest that well over half of U.S. adults age 65 and older engage in at least one of these productive activities, with participation in volunteering and informal helping being especially common.
Productive aging has consequences for society as well as for the participant. The productive engagements of older adults are widely acknowledged to contribute substantially to society as a whole, and especially to the social groups, communities, and networks that directly benefit from the contributions. Older adults contribute millions of hours in unpaid productive activity, and many of these valued services would need to be paid for if they were not contributed by older adults. For example, Johnson and Schaner place a dollar value on these activities and estimate that in 2002, Americans age 55 and older generated $162 billion in unpaid activity through volunteering and caregiving alone.
As well, participation in productive activities often directly benefits the older adult who participates in them. Some research finds participating in productive activities is linked to avoiding disease and even prolonging survival. In this respect, a clear pathway is evident between “productive aging” (participation in activities that have intrinsic value and contribute to the well-being of others) and “successful aging,” that is, aging with good health, high functioning, and active involvement.
The focus of this chapter is on factors that shape engagement in productive activities in later life, referred to here as antecedents of productive aging, and on the consequences of productive aging. In considering antecedents, we review both individual-level factors that promote or inhibit participation and societal and cultural factors that shape the opportunities for older adults to participate. In addition, in reviewing consequences of productive activity, we offer a brief summary of the societal-level consequences, and we focus especially on the scientific literature suggesting that participation in productive activities contributes to health and well-being in later life.
Previous editions of this volume included a chapter on productive aging authored by Robert N. Butler, MD, widely regarded as the founder of the concept. Butler traced the creation of the concept of productive aging to the recognition that older adults had much to contribute well into later life, yet they encountered societal barriers to participation in the form of ageism and prejudice. Indeed, early in the development of this concept, Butler suggested that ageism should be treated as a disease, with productive aging pursued as a remedy. Butler's insights, and his advocacy on behalf of older adults, established a framework for re-envisioning later life and promoting activity as a means of preserving health and well-being. The following discussion highlights the enduring usefulness of these insights.
A Portrait of Productive Aging in the United States
The research literature on productive aging places emphasis on five forms of productive activities frequently performed by older adults: paid work, volunteering, caregiving, informal helping, and grandparenting. In this section, we describe these activities and offer recent evidence on how participation in each is related to age and gender. The data used here to describe productive activity among middle-aged and older adults are taken from the 2010 version of the HRS. The HRS contains a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States age 51 and older. The HRS is one of only a handful of data files that contain national-level information on all five of these forms of productive activity. Other sources of information describing some of these specific activities are available, and the statistics generated from the HRS may not match those generated from these other sources, largely because of differences in research design. Readers should keep this in mind when comparing our numbers to those generated from other sources.
Paid Work
The capacity of the older population to serve in the paid labor force was, and sometimes still is, considered as the standard indicator of productivity by some observers. Typical indicators of economic performance, such as the gross domestic product, omit estimated monetary values of voluntary activities and informal contributions made by older adults. Despite the distinctive age curve in labor force participation, which peaks during late middle age and declines thereafter, a considerable number of older workers remain in the labor force well into the later stages of the life course. We estimate that about 18 million adults ages 51 to 64, and 7.5 million age 65 and older, were working for pay in 2010 (see Table 32-1 ). Moreover, older adults are expected to comprise a larger share of the workforce in coming years. Estimates suggest that the share of the labor force composed of workers age 55 years and older will increase to 26% in 2022, up from 12% in 2012. As demonstrated with HRS data ( Table 32-1 ), there is a considerable difference in labor force participation between older males and females, with males being more likely than females to be in the labor market in later life. However, recent data suggest a narrowing of the gender differences, as a result of declining participation among men and rising participation among women contributing to the trend.
TABLE 32-1
Productive Activity Participation Rates by Age Group and Sex (Estimated from the 2010 Health and Retirement Study * )
Based on data from the 2010 Health and Retirement Study.
| Paid Work † | Volunteering † | Informal Help † | Grandparenting † | Caregiving † | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of Population | Number ‡ | Percentage of Population | Number ‡ | Percentage of Population | Number ‡ | Percentage of Population | Number ‡ | Percentage of Population | Number ‡ | |
| Total | ||||||||||
| 51-64 | 62.8% | 17,734 | 41.6% | 11,751 | 66.0% | 18,643 | 13.7% | 3,874 | 21.0% | 5,933 |
| 65+ | 19.8% | 7,488 | 35.7% | 13,517 | 49.0% | 18,562 | 9.3% | 3,528 | 15.2% | 5,743 |
| Male | ||||||||||
| 51-64 | 66.5% | 8,281 | 39.74% | 4,949 | 71.67% | 8,926 | 10.4% | 1,292 | 17.9% | 2,219 |
| 65+ | 25.1% | 4,119 | 34.64% | 5,693 | 55.86% | 9,180 | 10.3% | 1,689 | 14.0% | 2,365 |
| Female | ||||||||||
| 51-64 | 59.9% | 9,453 | 43.12% | 6,801 | 61.60% | 9,717 | 16.4% | 2,582 | 23.5% | 3,713 |
| 65+ | 15.7% | 3,369 | 36.45% | 7,824 | 43.71% | 9,382 | 8.6% | 1,839 | 16.1% | 3,379 |
* Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a panel survey based on a national probability sample of adults age 51 and older. For more information, refer to http://hrsonline.isr.umich.edu/ .
† The following questionnaire items from the HRS were used to assess productive activity participation among older adults. Paid Work : Are you doing any work for pay at the present time? Volunteering: Have you spent any time in the past 12 months doing volunteer work for religious, educational, health-related, or other charitable organizations? Informal Help: Have you spent any time in the past 12 months helping friends, neighbors, or relatives who did not live with you and did not pay you for the help? Grandparenting: Did you spend 100 or more hours in total in the last two years taking care of grandchildren? Caregiving: How often do you care for a sick or disabled adult? (Respondents were counted as a caregiver if they provide care at least once a month.)
‡ Numbers in thousands; respondent weights were used to produce estimates that are representative of the U.S. population.
Older workers do not show much difference in the type of work they do and what they do when compared with their younger counterparts, as they can be found in most industries and occupations, broadly classified. However, older workers are more likely than younger workers to be self-employed or to work part-time. For some older adults, these forms of employment may be pursued as part of a phased retirement strategy, working fewer hours for the same employer, or working in a bridge job with a different employer, each serving as a stepping-stone from full-time work to full retirement.
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